Hey everyone, I always love playing this game with my game group, but we always find outselves wishing things were different. I came up with a few ideas and was looking for feedback:

(note: not all of these ideas are mine, I'm on this forum a lot and I like of what I see here. Thank you to the whole Boardgamegeek community for all the contributions made thus far. I am simply trying to push the community further on this great game)

1. Combat changes:-figures cannot stack, instead, figures will represent armies and each army will have a specified group of units with it. these will be represented by some marker (we used lego 2x2 bricks of different colors for the different unit types). Now when you battle, you know what troops you have and it isn't random.-Stacking limit now refers to how many units you have in each army, and battle hand size is no longer an effect (no cards)-Using Axis and Allies style of combat, units will go back and forth with an attack and defense system which allows teams to retreat.-upgrades would make units more offensive/defensive, and different unit types would cost different amounts, with trumping removed (rock paper scissors isn't a great system). -For every two points of advantage you have over the opponent, you get to reroll a die.-Figures have the option of skipping movement to "fortify," turning figure on side. if this figure is attacked, they get to be the attackers, not the defenders.

Obviously this is in an abstract stage right now and a lot of cards would need tweaks, but none of these tweaks would be drastic

2. Nukes-a new desert star building which provides lots of production and the option to harvest a nuke resource. -nukes range are limited to the adjacent board tiles, unless boarded on a plane-nukes don't destroy the city, but instead remove any units, buildings, wonders, and great persons from a 3x3 area.-areas hit by nukes get wounds placed on them. these areas are now "radiated" and need to be cleaned up for a certain amount of production as a city action to be rebuilt on.

Now nukes are more frequent, making them a valuable and dangerous tool

3. City States-When discovering a city state, draw a city state card. The city state card will go next to your player area.-This card has a favor tracker going from -2 to +2. the Player can spend culture or gold to increase yourself on the favor track, Doing so will provide benefits based on the city state type.-Being low on the track will remove your privileges with the city state, and eventually have them revolt-City states will provide Delegates

The goal of this is to make city states not just a small bonus, but helpful in generating bonus resources and powerful delegates for the next part. In addition, this gives players another use for their culture, to help distribute resources away from victories and into development of experience.

4. World Congress-During a World Congress phase after the research phase, players will be able to vote on game-wide effects using delegates. Players gain delegates based off of how many cities and city states they have.-Effects can include projects which give player lots of a specific resource, embargeos on certain players to reduce their trade or culture production, bans to certain social policies, or reductions/increases in unit stack size-These delegates only appear in the congress and do not have units on the board.

The World Congress is a way to help the members of the game balance out overpowered players by bans, embargoes, and bonuses to players to put effort into this new mechanic

7. Upgraded Barbarians with AI-Barbarians have a tracker on culture track to mark progress. Every turn after world congress phase, tracker goes up. With each new culture level, barbarian units and speed level up. On great person spots, all villages spawn barbarian hordes.-Barbarian hordes move based off their level speed towards the nearest and weakest figure/city.

8. Conquering cities-When conquering a city, have the option to pillage or puppet-pillaging gives player loot like normal and destroys cities buildings, wonders, and great persons.-plundering require bureaucracy. conquering player must wait a turn, but afterwards controls the city for a certain amount of trade or gold a turn. Can puppet more than one city-If you fail to make the payment, the city revolts, original owner gets to control revolters and if they win, they get their city back.-If a capital is puppeted, player switches capital tile with another city tile and makes that other city the new capital. Capitals cost more trade or gold per turn to control, and revolter are more powerful.

the goal of these changes are to expand the endgame play so that players are utilizing the cool effects of the endgame more, like the ability to nuke someone, or the fast flying airplanes or free buildings

These ideas don't have any numbers attached to them because I'm not concerned about how much something will cost, but rather if the concepts would work in the board game. I appreciate any and all feedback.